This exhibition addresses architecture with a small 'a'. The architecture of everyday life, the suffering architecture that carves up and dominates our 'lived' space - the concrete skin. Nothing more than architecture reveals and creates the systems and structures in our society and its hierarchical positions, defining social space, dominating and reflecting our everyday life. Concrete Dreams brings together 27 artists from a range of disciplines, exploring diverse and conflicting issues such as pathos, humour, desire, history, power, wealth and neglect.

The exhibited work is driven by a socio/political aesthetic akin to our experiences, playing with the possibilities of space, and thus buildings, as objects, matter, words and philosophies. For the artist, these architectural spaces, are waiting to be re-possessed and re-evaluated: subliminal images of the questionable and ghostly occupation of a deserted ballroom: the foreboding housed within a constructed modelled cabin: the kitsch conglomerates of the man-made landscape and the sentiment of the 'cottage': the promise and potential failure of the architectural façade.

The phenomena of the modernist utopian dream results in a description of a council house block by one local London tenant as a 'large car park' and by another as 'barracks'. The semi-detached , the terrace, the high rise estate, the new suburbia, are all based on serial repetition. The post-modern architectural experience of the cinema, the hospital, the car park, the shopping mall, the motorway underpass ...has escalated to a global déjà vu .

SE London's innovative APT Gallery is proud to showcase this exhibition to coincide with its participation in Open House London weekend 20 and 21 September. The Gallery is housed within an historical warehouse building, recognised for its pioneering structure and fabrication.

Curated by Fran Cottell and Liz Harrison.

Above: Installation shot of Louisa Minkin, Victoria Rance, Cornelia Parker, Ekkehard Altenburger. Courtesy of the artists.